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| For Questions Call/Text Dr. Jimenez Personally @ 915-540-8444 or Contact Us @ 915-850-0900 |
A balanced and nutritious diet is important towards
maintaining or improving a healthy lifestyle. Although many people make great
use of this knowledge by staying physically active or eating good quality
foods, it can often be difficult for these same practices to be passed on to
children, especially when it comes to kids eating vegetables. Vegetables are an
important part of our diet but, many parents often face the struggle of making
sure their children are eating them. While many growing children can be picky
eaters when it comes to eating their greens, there’s a few tips and tricks you
can try to get your kids to start eating healthier.
First of all, when introducing kids to eating vegetables, it’s
important to focus on enhancing their taste. For children, the flavor of
vegetables can be something different to get into. For the mean time, adding
Hollandaise sauce to any type of vegetable such as cauliflower, broccoli and
asparagus can complement the flavor well. Cheese sauce also works well with
vegetables and its easy to make your own low-fat versions of either and still
offer a tasty but healthier alternative. When cooking vegetables for children,
try cooking these as to soften up the texture a bit more than usual. If you’re
ever in doubt whether your children will like the taste and texture of one
particular vegetable, you can always sauté these in a bit of butter, plenty of
lemon, garlic powder, and/or chicken broth. After all, for children who
normally aren’t accustomed to eating their vegetables, these can often appear
bland in taste. Enhancing the flavor of vegetables can be a good way of
ensuring your children will learn to love them.
When trying to get children to eat raw vegetables, low fat
ranch dip can help make these taste good for them. Once your kids begin liking
to eat their vegetables, you can gradually remove the sauces and dips. Chances
are, your children won’t even know the difference.
Also, for many children who don’t enjoy eating their
vegetables, the issue can be they’re having difficulty adjusting to the
different textures of vegetables. In these instances, it’s recommended to cut
and seed vegetables in order for the texture of the vegetable to be more
consistent, such as removing cucumber seeds.
In case of really picky eaters, another thing you can try
out is to puree vegetables. You can blend or puree all sorts of different vegetables
together and add them into a spaghetti sauce with butter. Kids will also often
eat a variety of vegetables that have been pureed into a smooth soup mixed with
cream. Vegetables are an essential part of our diets, especially for the
growing body of children and, by helping our kids eat their vegetables in all
sorts of delicious ways, we help ensure they will grow to become healthy and
continue their healthy eating habits.
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
